


Trifle

by nakedhelot



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kavinsky lives, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:19:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nakedhelot/pseuds/nakedhelot
Summary: If you had told 16 year old Adam Parrish that he would ever get along with Joseph Kavinsky, he would have just walked away.Eight years later, with Joseph Kavinsky bouncing on top of him, dark hair plastered to his face with sweat, lips parted, tongue licking his teeth, Adam finally understands Ronan Lynch’s fascination.





	1. Adam

If you had told 16 year old Adam Parrish that he would ever get along with Joseph Kavinsky, he would have just walked away.

Eight years later, with Joseph Kavinsky bouncing on top of him, dark hair plastered to his face with sweat, lips parted, tongue licking his teeth, Adam finally understands Ronan Lynch’s fascination.

-

 

After the third week of moving into his new flat in Crown Heights, Adam opened the curtain to let the morning light in. Instead it was a cloudy Thursday morning and Joseph Kavinsky was smoking on a fire escape one floor down. Head tipped back, eyes closed, veiny arms dotted with small tattoos poking through the railing.

In the time Adam spent scrutinising whether or not it was actually Joseph Kavinsky, Joseph Kavinsky opened his eyes and stared directly back at him. After a second or two, Adam went to the toilet and when he came back, Kavinsky was gone.

He wouldn’t sight him again for another three months.

-

 

It’s at a work party. There’s a few reasons Adam came. One, he’s freshly out of intern level. Two, the tab is footed by the company and this is a restaurant that Adam won’t be able to afford until at least 5 years into his career otherwise. Three, he’s always heard that lawyers were the wildest of the bunch at college, however he himself was a law student and all he ever did was stay in the dorm room, study and have anxiety attacks eight times a year. Maybe the stereotype comes from the industry.

Adam’s made it, and now he’s curious.

When the cheese boards come in and the moscato is poured, his team leader points behind their department supervisor using her eyes. His department supervisor turns around and smiles. Adam looks over his shoulder, and there he is. Joseph Kavinsky, dressed in slim black pants, the type that’s both casual and dressy, and a red hawaiian shirt that looks like it came off the set of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. He’s holding a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag.

Among the polished concrete, brass light fixtures and marble dinnerware, the young professional types decked out in Calvin Klein suiting and Celine handbags, he still looks like the most expensive thing there.

Inexplicably, Adam feels closer to Ronan than he has in a very long time.

-

  

It’s after the fifth time that Kavinsky walks away from their table (speakeasy in the Lower East Side after a successful court battle for a case they had been working on for three months) that Adam gets up, citing a smoke break, a lie - he doesn’t smoke, and follows him out the door. He catches him slipping into a black sports car and driving away.

“He’s cute, huh?”

His team leader, Nadia, lights up next to him.

“Actually, I went to high-school with him.” Admitting that seemed better than letting someone think he was into Joseph Kavinsky.

“Oh, so was he some kind of chemistry genius back then?”

“He hardly showed up”

Nadia laughs.

“I like that, a delinquent mastermind.”

“Mastermind?” Adam is incredulous. “I mean, he’s just a dealer,”

Nadia stares at him for a bit with amusement in her eyes.

 “Actually,” She pulls a drag from her cigarette, Vogue Slims. “I think he’s actually the chemist, the whole Walter White of his own operation. Are you ready, Adam? You’re entering level two of Skadden Arps: team-building narcotics.”

 Adam can’t help but laugh.

 They sit on a ledge a few meters away from the speakeasy door, and she lights another cigarette and offers him one. He declines.

 “Okay, so, a year ago, a couple of months before you came, we were celebrating winning this case from hell at Meatpacking. Obviously drugs were involved. The next day the police come in and asks everyone on our floor to do a drug test. They even had a warrant.”

 “What, why?”

 “Right, the case was a corruption thing against some big wig in the NYPD. In any case, all we could do was submit ourselves to it, and shit ourselves. Of course the company kicked a big fuss and all that. A week later the commissioner himself came in and apologised to the floor. One of the partners takes us out for dinner that night and tells us we all passed the drug test.”

 Adam’s face must say it all because Nadia continues, “Yeah we all thought the same. Bought out lab, easy enough with Skadden Arps money and influence. But we went out again sometime later and one of my girls starts to feel ill, then she throws up blood. I take her to the emergency room expecting to get chewed out about how much drugs she has in her system. Instead I get told to go home. I receive a call from her later, asking for some time off work. Apparently she has stomach cancer.”

Nadia stubs her cigarette out on the ledge.

“The thing is, they did a blood test, it came out clean.” 

Nadia pulls out a tiny ziploc bag of white powder.

“Whatever this stuff is, it’s not cocaine. It’s a better high than cocaine, I don’t feel like offing myself even when I have too much, too often, and it doesn’t show up on tox screenings. Your boy Kavinsky, is the only one who sells it.”

At risk of lowering his social status in the firm, Adam refuses the line offered to him later that night.

 

-

 

At the christmas party at Marquee in Chelsea, Nadia ruins Adam’s life.

“Come sit with Adam and I, K!”

Adam’s skin actually crawls at the old nickname, but before Kavinsky could presumably decline, Nadia carries on, “You know you’re just gonna end up being called back here by one of us. Might as well stay, y’know, take advantage of that Skadden Arps bar tab.”

Kavinsky holds Adam’s eyes for a second longer than normal and Nadia, sensing weakness purrs “Plus, I hear you and Adam are mates from back in the day,”

Kavinsky smiles and sits across from Adam.

“Oh yeah,” His voice is low and raspy, sounding like it hasn’t been used in a long time.

“We were real close.”

Nadia grins, baring straight teeth, whitened fortnightly and without even trying to be convincing, points to the department manager, “Oh look, there’s a person I have to talk to, enjoy catching up boys!” and walks away.

They sit in silence, making no pretense of checking each other out. Kavinsky breaks silence first.

“You’ve changed.”

“I would hope so. It’s been eight years.”

“Congrats on finally affording decent suiting.”

“I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not Hugo Boss. I got it from a Sears clearance.”

Kavinsky’s sardonic grin widens to one of genuine amusement.

“Don’t worry, you look just as good.”

Adam’s mind reels. Is Joseph Kavinsky seriously talking him up right now?

“You’ve changed as well.”

Kavinsky looks amusedly incredulous. “Oh really,” He leans back in his chair, “how?”

Kavinsky is wearing the same pants he always wears when Adam sees him, and a black long sleeve button-up made of thin velvet. His dark hair falls soft across his forehead, damp from the snow outside. Adam can make out the stroke of a tattoo near his collarbone.

What he can’t believe most is that he’s playing this game, with Kavinsky. Nevertheless, he tilts his head just so.

“You have taste now.”

Kavinsky barks a laugh and leaves soon after that.

“What, leaving already?”

Kavinsky makes a show of looking around the wood panels and the floor covered in suits.

“Sorry babe, not my scene.”

 -

 

Adam hasn’t messaged Ronan in a long time. They broke up more than four years ago, in the middle of college. Ronan wasn’t willing to leave the Farm and Adam wasn’t a saint.

College was different to Aglionby. He wasn’t the poor kid, he was just a tanned boy from the boonies, fit from a life of physical activity. People paid him attention. He found that he liked it.

But they talk, every now and then. Usually in the group chat with Gansey and Blue, making small talk after one of Gansey’s plans to catch-up fall through because his family is grooming him for a life of politics or Blue is being sent to another research trip with her advisor.

This time, Adam opens a private chat. Their last private message is from almost exactly four years ago.

 

 

 

> Ronan Lynch: met up with blue and gansey today, theyre back in town for the holidays.

 

Adam had read between the lines, didn’t reply.

 

 

> Adam Parrish: Hey, I know it’s been a long time, but you’ll never guess who I ran into.
> 
> Adam Parrish: Joseph Kavinsky.
> 
> Adam Parrish: It’s funny because he’s known my co-workers for longer than I have.

 

Adam fights himself on whether or not he should mention Kavinsky lives in the building across his. How they haven’t spoken until now even though they’re a minute away from each other, even though they’ve been circling each other for months.

The app shows that Ronan Lynch is offline.

The next morning, Adam wakes up to a new message.

 

 

 

> Ronan Lynch: send me your address. Im coming over.

 

-

 

While he’s waiting for new files from another department to be sent over, Adam can’t help but mull over the situation. In the twilight months of their relationship, Ronan had been reluctant to leave the Farm to meet him at college. Even though he knew that Adam hated, _hated_ Henrietta. All it took was a mention of Joseph Kavinsky, he didn’t even know that Kavinsky was basically Adam’s neighbour, and he was ready to drop everything for a visit.

What happens, to him, when they meet again.

-

 

 

 

> Ronan Lynch: why the FUCK doesnt gansey or blue or ANYONE know your address or where you work?!!?

 

-

 

He comes home on New Year’s Eve and hour before midnight. Adam didn’t want to admit it, but he had gone out with the team in hopes of meeting Kavinsky in a casual, coincidental basis. When the clock read 10:30 and he still isn’t there, Nadia notices his annoyance and comes up to him.

“Oh shit, I forgot to tell you we picked up at the team leaders lunch earlier today because there’s too many dogs out at night on New Year’s Eve.”

At that stage everyone’s too messy for Adam’s liking and they don’t even have a view in this crowded, stuffy club.

As soon as he finishes his shower, there’s a knock at his door.

Adam’s mind sparks. Did he send his address to Ronan, did Gansey find out his address, did he order pizza, and all sorts of other thoughts scroll swiftly through his brain.

At the second knock, he squints through the little window in his door. On the other side stands Kavinsky, in fisheye, wearing black Adidas tracksuits and a heavy ultramarine coat.

He opens the door.

“Hey,”

Kavinsky blinks at him.

“Hey, can I come in?”

All Adam can offer him is some Diet Coke, so they sit on Adam’s fire escape facing the street, their breaths visible in the winter air, drinking warm Diet Coke from the cupboard.

“How did you know my room number?”

“The floor was easy, but I’m not gonna front. Your’s was the fourth door I knocked on.”

Adam licks his lips and breathes out a laugh. A plume of white unfurls in front of him.

“So you’re a big lawyer person now. Picked up any bad habits yet?”

“I don’t think so,”

“You’re probably never gonna drink,”

Adam looks at Kavinsky whose staring straight onto the street. For the most part, people don’t understand why he doesn’t drink. Like, they get it, but they also can’t comprehend why he can’t separate one thing from the other.

“But I find it very hard to believe that you went to college without at least trying weed.”

Adam takes a sip of his coke. Kavinsky’s phone is at their feet and lights up at another missed call, in a string of 17 missed calls. The clock reads 11:52.

“I went to an Loyola Marymount,”

“So you have,”

“I have, but I kind of don’t get it. It didn’t really do anything but give me a headache.”

“Parrish.” Kavinsky looks at him in mild derision, “How are you going to last in the law world without all the industry vices?”

“Nadia and the rest like it. I suspect it’s because they think it’s cute, novel.”

“You must hate what I do then.”

“It’s not as simple as how I thought it was in high school. Also I suspect, you being able to do what you do, everything else must seem menial.”

Kavinsky smokes his cigarette to the filter and looks at him.

“I’m guessing you don’t do it for the money. That must be easy enough for you, especially with your whole, schtick.” Adam wiggles his fingers.

Kavinsky’s eyebrows raise and his jaw shifts as if he’s offended.

“Schtick?”

“Yeah, _schtick._ ”

Kavinsky’s phone lights up again, this time it’s a “Happy New Year!!!!!! Thanks for the good times!!!!!!” message from a number not saved as a contact. 11:57.

“It’s something to do, get me out of the house, my own head, y’know? And it’s something like sharing it with the world, right?” There’s a self-mocking expression on Kavinsky’s face, like he knows exactly how lame his words sound.

“No listen, I’m a massive fucking show off, yeah? But bragging about this shit would probably get me enslaved or some shit. This is the next best thing. Providing, not a drug, but a motherfucking experience. Art.” He finishes with a grin.

“Art?”

“Yeah, _art._ ”

The sounds in the neighbourhood get louder and Kavinsky’s phone lights up again. 11:59.

Kavinsky leans towards him.

“Don’t have anyone you need to be calling at midnight?”

“No. The line’s will be clogged up anyway.”

The neighbourhood is now shouting the countdown in tandem and Kavinsky looks away to join the yelling.

“9! 8! 7!”

Adam stares at him, feeling something like compulsion in his chest. Risk. He’s a year away from a six figure salary living in a house he pays for by himself, in a neighbourhood most of his peers would kill to live in.

“5! 4! 3!”

Adam puts his arm around Kavinsky’s shoulder and pulls him closer. Kavinsky turns to him like he knew it was going to happen.

“2,”

Kavinsky was really, really good at kissing. The sounds of New Year’s Eve erupted around them and Kavinsky pulls away and licks his teeth.

“Hm. Worth cooking up some non-headache weed for.” 

-

 

“But saying this is addictive is like saying carbs are addictive. In fact, a carb addiction is probably worse for you than this.”

“Kavinsky, please stop trying to convince me that your drugs are healthier than bread.”

“No listen, this isn’t _made of anything_. If you put this through a chemical analysis or whatever, it will come up blank.”

“How does that even work.”

“Dick three’s 2nd Camaro had no engine. Am I right?”

Adam tries to smooth over the hitch in his chest.

“Yeah,”

“But it still ran.”

“Yeah,”

“It’s not like I can’t make it so that it has all the correct chemical components, trust me I could. But then it’s just limiting it to what those chemical components can do. What’s the point, just make it awake then. And this might sound like shit to you, but if you have the same level of discipline that allows you to stop yourself from ordering pizza for the fifth day in a row, then you should be able to not rely on these to be happy.”

“You’re right, that does sound like shit.”

“It’s the science of it, Parrish. Or the lack thereof. It’s not made of anything your brain knows. So your brain can’t form a chemical dependence on it. Nor does it make your brain dump serotonin or dopamine. It doesn’t have that ability, otherwise it would show up on tox screenings.”

“You still haven’t answered how it works.”

“Okay, so I don’t know exactly how it works. How the fuck am I able to dream up shit in my chronic lucid dreaming, and be able to pull them into physicality in my waking life? Who knows? It works that way because I want it to work that way. Nothingness into somethingness. My dreams to yours.”

Adam stares at Kavinsky and Kavinsky starts to look like he’s won.

It’s February and still damn cold, but they’re sitting on Adam’s fire escape anyway, Kavinsky with a not-cigarette already lit between his lips.

Adam takes the one being offered to him and sucks on it so the tip burns orange.

A few minutes later, after making certain that it burns odorless, not just lacking weed smell, but lacking any scent at all, Adam feels confident enough to smoke with Kavinsky on his couch and not fuck up the terms of his lease.

“Oh, fuck, is this what weed feels like,”

“This should be exactly 5 times better than the best weed I’ve tried.”

“You try actual drugs?”

“Market research, man.”

“Are you an addict?”

“Of real drugs? Nah, I haven’t had any in more than a year. Usually I just try it in case people ask me for basic stuff. ‘Just cocaine man, none of your fancy designer stuff’.”

“You sell them regular shit?”

“Dreamed up regular shit. Better they get it from me than the dirty shit floating around cut with rat poison, yeah? Only existing clients though, if I do it too much the gangs that sling it would probably hunt me down as a lone competitor, you know.”

Adam takes another drag of his not-cigarette and feels the tingles work down his legs, like a low intensity, sustained orgasm.

“I get why people do this now.”

“Mission accomplished.”

They make out.

-

 

 

 

> Ronan Lynch: im in new york if anyones around and wants to meet up
> 
> Gansey Richard: That sounds fantastic! I have a conference there in two days, so if you’re still around we should definitely have lunch.
> 
> Blue Sargent: Sorry guys… I’m still on assignment in Jakarta.
> 
> Gansey Richard: Adam? You wouldn’t happen to be around at the same time?

 

-

 

They’re eating reubens at a deli around the corner when Kavinsky brings it up.

“By the way, your firm wants me to do another drop for a thing on Friday. Will you be there?”

Adam recalls Nadia inviting him and him saying yes.

“Yeah, why?”

“I’m most likely gonna treat you like we haven’t been hooking up for the past 3 months, is that cool?”

Adam has to put his reuben down onto the red gingham napkin.

“Right, what does that mean.”

Kavinsky pauses his bite mid way, takes a look at Adam and rolls his eyes, the same way he always does when he gears up for an argument against Adam. The lawyer.

“It means I’m gonna rock up, give your department manager,”

“Adeola,”

“Yeah, her, the shit. Nadia is gonna try set us up again. I’m gonna act cold and peace out, and you’re gonna watch me walk out. Like how it was before this year, yeah?”

The thing is, Adam does get it. It’s the most logical thing to do. His career would be much better off if it wasn’t known he was fraternising with a dealer. And yet.

“Why, do you want to show me off,” Adam never thought anyone could pull of looking smug chewing a sandwich, but then Kavinsky made a lot of unlikely things happen.

“Maybe I want you to show me off.”

Kavinsky turns fond and wipes his mouth of with a napkin. “I have no one to show you off to, though.”

“What happened to the rest of your ‘crew’”

“Scattered. We all went to different universities. Jiang went back to China to resume his position as the heir of a multi-billion dollar company. Swan and Skov, I think stuck together. They went to Columbia with me, then went on some kind of soul searching trip that I didn’t want to be the third wheel to and lost contact. Proko’s long gone.”

“Why’d you all fall out?”

“We didn’t really fall out. Just gradually drifted. Like we all knew we were no longer good for each other. Do you still hang with the ‘Monmouth crew’”

Adam steamrolls over the question.

“And you think we’re good for each other?”

Joseph looks at him intently.

“I think. You’re definitely better for me than I am for you.”

“Is that so.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m gonna end up fucking you up.”

 

-

 

Spring is the best time to not-smoke on Adam’s fire escape. When Kavinsky offers him his not-cigarette he stares at it dubiously.

“I dunno, Kavinsky, this might ruin my life.”

Unexpectedly, Kavinsky’s face falls into the strangest, emptiest expression. Adam scrambles.

“I’m joking, shit, don’t worry, I have yet to order pizza five straight nights in a row. We’re good.”

Kavinsky rests his forehead on the balls of his thumb joint and starts shaking his head.

“Don’t do that to me, man.”

“I’m not doing anything. Why don’t we ever go to your place anyway.”

“Smooth.”

“Look, it was a dick move, let me segue.”

“Maybe I’ll invite you in one day. That’s like, level 5 friendship though.”

“Kavinsky, you were sucking me off a few days ago.”

“But is sucking off, friendship, hm.”

Kavinsky takes a drag of his not-cigarette and releases the smoke through a grin.

He’s wearing a soft linen button up, short sleeve with a slightly deeper than normal collar. Adam suspects he has five pairs of the same casual-dressy black pants. He has his hand threaded through his hair, slicking it back from his forehead, a sign that he’s still thinking about Adam’s ill-advised comment.

He remembers his disgust at Ronan’s Aglionby fascination, that underneath the spiky hair and the terrible fashion combination of tank tops and cargo pants, Ronan probably saw this. He begins to grasp at it’s edges, understanding.

“Do you think you could dream up, like a love potion or something.”

As soon as Adam says it, he can already tell it’s the wrong thing to follow up with. But, it’s already said and he wants to know anyway.

Kavinsky looks at him with no hint of mirth.

“Parrish, have you never read Harry Potter? Even with magic, you can’t make people fall in love with you. You can make duplicates of people and make the duplicate fall in love with you but even that’s a fuck up. It just doesn’t work.”

The tone makes it clear that Kavinsky knows this through experience. Adam wants to shiver, but doesn’t let himself do it. The things that this person next to him can do, it’s shiver inducing.

“Hey,”

Kavinsky looks at him.

“Can I fuck you?”

“Wow. Wo-ow. You’re a real dickhead today, aren’t you.”

“Is that a no.”

“No that’s not a no.” Kavinsky sucks his not-cigarette to the filter and stands up, dusting himself off, “Haven’t you heard? Dickheads are kind of my type.”

Adam sucks his not-cigarette to the filter and stands up and follows him inside. Despite how much fooling around they’ve done the past few months, they haven’t actually gone all the way yet, and his palms are sweaty.

He hears the shower running.

When he slides the shower door open, Kavinsky turns around, “Wow, straight to shower sex?”

Adam pulls Kavinsky by the waist, flush against himself.

Kavinsky smiles.

 

-

 

Adam loves fucking Kavinsky in thirty degree weather. He doesn’t have air conditioning in his room, only a standing fan and an open window.

Kavinsky is a big fan of riding him, and the image his sweaty hair makes, dripping into his eyes or slicked back with his hands, the water beading on his skin, his cock bobbing up and down in this sultry weather just does things to Adam.

Adam used to switch with Ronan regularly but Kavinsky prefers taking it. Every now and then Adam will feel an itch and say something like “Hey, can you fuck me tonight? I wanna come from my prostate.” And Kavinsky will respond with something like “Well, I do love it when you sweet talk me, darling.” And proceeds to fuck him thoroughly. He was really good too. He can make Adam come without touching him, with a 50% success rate. But mostly, it’s Kavinsky, with Adam bruising his pelvis, helping him come down on him. Kavinsky on his hands and knees, whole body shifting up and down the sheets with the force of Adam’s thrusts, eyes rolling back. Kavinsky seated on Adam’s cock, who is standing in front of his wardrobe mirror watching his dick disappear into Kavinsky again and again, Kavinsky looking straight at him and smirking when he says “Fuck me harder, babe.”

 

-

 

Thank god it’s a Kavinsky free night when Ronan Lynch shows up at his door. That doesn’t stop him from ignoring the increasingly violent knocks after he peers through the little window, sees Ronan in fisheye and calls Gansey Richard for the first time in three years.

“What the fuck Gansey, what the _fuck_?”

“Why do you even think it was me, he could have found you on his own!”

“Are you seriously fucking lying to me right now?”

“Look, do you know he lives in New York now? In fact, he lives in Brooklyn. Williamsburg.”

Adam rolls his eyes because of course Ronan would choose to live in Williamsburg.

“Adam, he moved late February. We’ve met up three times since then. Blue even managed to get a two day stop over before her next destination, Argentina, by the way and we had lunch. The three of us. You would have known if you actually still checked the group chat.”

Adam doesn’t tell him that he does read the group chat, he’s just adjust the setting so they don’t  know whether or not he reads any of the messages that come through.

“I doubt you would have come, but if you had read the messages there might be the possibility.”

“Yeah, look, how is Ronan about to bust my door down right now?”

“What, for godsake, let him in.”

“Gansey.”

“I’d just like to point out, I could have done this at any point throughout your self imposed exile from us. But I didn’t. He just seemed so desperate to see you, when we went to dinner a few days ago. Desperate enough to actually worry me. When you work for Skadden Arps and have a linkedin profile, you’re not very hard for someone like me to find.”

Adam had to put his phone down and take a deep breath at the tenacity of it all.

“Congratulations, Gansey. On managing to not be a controlling, creep human being for the last three years. Too bad you ruined such a good streak of being actually decent.”

He wished he was on a landline or something, because pressing the big red button on his phone just wasn’t satisfying enough.

At this point his neighbour came out to her fire escape annoyed and looked at him. “Do you want to call the police or should I.”

“That won’t be necessary, I’m sorry for all the noise.”

“In that case, can you open the door and tell your psycho friend to fuck off already, _sheesh_.”

Adam opens the door and Ronan barges straight in.

“What the fuck, Parrish.”

Adam feigns ignorance “I’m pretty sure I should be the one confused here.”

“No, you see, you’re the one who name drops a motherfucking ghost, and then became one.”

“Why were you so interested?”

“Of course I was interested, 4 years, 5? Of radio silence, and the first thing I hear from you is Kavinsky.”

“If I had talked about what I had for dinner that night would you have _moved to fucking New York. Williamsburg! Apparently!_ ”

“So did you want me to come up or not? What’s your go, here?”

At that, Adam loses steam. What did he want to come from letting Ronan know that he had made contact with Joseph Kavinsky again. He doesn’t even remember.

“I don’t know. It just seemed like a thing to do at the time.”

“A thing to do. ‘A’ thing.”

Adam looks at him, not knowing what else to say. Ronan deflates. They’re quiet for a moment and Ronan leans against the kitchen window sill.

“So have you seen him again?”

Adam sits down.

“Yeah. I told you. Co-worker and him run the same circles every now and then.”

“You mean, he’s dealing to your lawyer friends.”

“What makes you think he’s a dealer?”

“Am I wrong.”

Adam hates it. Hates how when it comes to Kavinsky, Ronan is so confident that he knows him. Does he know that Kavinsky has mole at the junction of his hip and his left thigh, and like a button, when he presses it during sex Kavinsky goes wild? Does Kavinsky know that Ronan loves being bitten right as he’s coming, especially on the neck and collarbone? Adam would bet that they didn’t. He knows them better than they know each other. Ronan takes his silence as a yes.

“Have you bought off him?”

“No.” He gives it to me for free, we smoke it together, we fuck.

Ronan stares into emptiness, for a bit.

“How’s he doing?”

“Kavinsky? He seems to be doing better than high school. Dresses better at least.”

Adam can’t pinpoint why he’s lying about this, there are a multitude of reasons but which one is his actual motivator escapes him. Why can’t he say, I’m fucking him. I’ve been hooking up with him since the literal start of the year. Since the literal first second of this year.

“That’s good.” Ronan actually seems relieved and looks out his window.

“Healthier, for sure.” He likes reubens from the deli around the corner.

“You haven’t seen him anywhere outside work things?” Ronan asks listlessly.

“No.” Yes. Two days ago. I was fucking him against my wardrobe mirror. He licked it when it fogged up and made out with his reflection. I could literally feel my dick grow bigger in him.

Something in Ronan’s demeanor changes, hardens. Like a lifetime of no lying made him some kind of human polygraph.

“Really.”

“Why.”

“That’s interesting. Your neighbour looks exactly like him.” Ronan waves and Adam’s heart drops to his stomach.

“Oh look, he’s waving back. Come wave with me, Adam.” Adam doesn’t move in his seat.

Ronan rips his gaze away from the window and fixes him with a familiar stare.

Adam gets up and goes to the window, some kind of complex tangle of emotions stuck like a rock in his throat.

Ronan turns back to Kavinsky, who is indeed looking up at them, with a cigarette in his mouth, lifted in a sardonic grin, waving.

“Let’s wave together.”

Adam waves his hand once and goes to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water.

He comes back out ten minutes later and Ronan is sitting languid on his couch.

“Adam. What the hell.”

They’re sitting next to each other, looking straight ahead.

“I’ve been neighbours with Kavinsky ever since I moved in mid last year.”

“That’s it?”

“No.”

“The fuck,”

“I’m not comfortable in telling you the rest.”

“That pretty much tells me everything I need to know, you hypocrite fuck.”

“That was eight fucking years ago. I’m sorry, alright, I was a judgemental piece of shit. To be fair, he was also a piece of shit. But I get it now.”

“You get what.”

“The appeal.”

“I have never hated you as much as I hate you now.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Not even when I dumped you?”

“You’re really breaking your own record in no time at all.”

“Not even when I disappeared after college?”

“What are you even trying to prove here? That you’re a shit enough human to be associating, _‘associating’_ with Joseph Kavinsky?”

“Do I make the cut.”

Ronan stands up abruptly, and walks toward the door.

“More than qualified. Expect to see more of me around here.”

He slams the door on his way out and it’s a while before Adam can extract himself from the sofa and go to bed.

 

-

 

Surprisingly, in the following weeks since Kavinsky makes no mention of it at all. They do what they always do, go to the deli to eat reuben sandwiches, coffee on Saturdays, Adam working through case files and Kavinsky messaging away god knows who on his phone. Fucking.

Ronan hasn’t messaged or made contact with him either. Adam doesn’t know how to feel about it. He’d be lying if he said seeing Ronan again after so long didn’t stir any feelings in him. His hair was still in the same number 2 buzzcut. Face as fine as ever. He had done away with the frivolities of his macabre wardrobe while Adam was still in college but he dressed simpler still nowadays and is looking all the better for it.

He stares at Kavinsky over his laptop, he’s on the fire escape smoking as always, reading a book. H.P. Lovecraft. An idea enters his head that certifies him to be more than enough of a Bad Person to associate, _‘associate’_ with Joseph Kavinsky.

“Do you wanna meet up with Ronan Lynch?”

Kavinsky looks at him in mild surprise for a bit, before he begins to obviously mentally weigh his answer.

“Yeah, do you mind.”

“Nah. With or without me there?”

Kavinsky laughs.

“Wow, most people wouldn’t ask that and assume that I’d like to see him on my own, you know?”

“I know. But I shamelessly want to be in the same room as both of you.”

Kavinsky’s eyes take on a dangerous glint. He put his book down and gets up, sits across Adam on his kitchen table.

“Why, Parrish?”

“You’re both the most fascinating people that have ever been in my life.”

“You a fan of dreamers?”

Adam deliberately casts a hot gaze on the hickeys he left on Kavinsky’s neck.

“Evidently.”

“I’ll meet up with him on my own. If it goes well, we might even invite you to the next one.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t gone after him yourself, or him to you.”

“He did. Straight after he was here. I got his number and told him I would message him when I was ready to meet up with him. I haven’t done that yet.”

“What were you waiting for.”

Kavinsky looks at him with a flat expression.

“Right, nevermind.”

Kavinsky smirks, and moves to sit on Adam’s lap. Adam winds his arms around Kavinsky’s body and closes his laptop.

“He looks as good as ever, don’t you agree?”

Adam smiles and licks a stripe up the path of hickeys on Kavinsky’s neck.

 

-

 

“What are you even worried about?”

“I’m not worried, where are you meeting up with him.”

“I don’t know, some bar near his place at Williamsburg. Also you are so clearly lying to me.”

“Why do you even have to ask. The person I’m currently sleeping with is about to meet up with my ex-boyfriend.”

“Is he even your most recent ex though?”

“No, but he’s the only one who’s actually mattered.”

“I feel like I should be the one worried now.”

“Good. Let’s be worried together.”

Kavinsky smirks and drinks more of his Saison Ale. Lately they’ve begun to frequent Berg’n because it’s the height of summer and the beer garden allows Kavinsky to smoke, as well as for this one drink with the depiction of a woman in the motion of stabbing her cheating partner, Adam presumes, in the neck. Adam feels like it could be a subliminal message, you never know with Kavinsky.

“You know how I disappeared in junior year?”

Adam fights so he doesn’t sit up straighter, doesn’t make his curiosity and relief that this topic was finally being broached so thickly palpable.

“Yeah?”

“I spent the weekend dreaming with Lynch. We really fried our brains that time. He pretty much fucking sucked so I had to teach him most of what he probably knows now, hah.”

Kavinsky lights another cigarette. Today it’s a loose fitting white t-shirt, threadbare from use, rolled up at the sleeves and tucked into his pants cinched by a simple black belt. Adam feels plain in his chinos and black shirt.

“Anyway, basically help him dream up Dick Three’s second Camaro. Try to hook up with him. Then he turns around and say’s, and I quote, fucking verbatim, ‘It’s never gonna be you and me’.”

Kavinsky’s face is scrunched up into a face that speaks of disgust and derision.

“Looking back at it now, it’s all so fucking lame, but I was fucking sixteen at that time and that fucker literally broke my heart. Drove away from Henrietta, never went back.”

“Isn’t your mother still in Henrietta?”

“I don’t know. She was when I left.”

“I remember Jiang stuck around, but Skov and Swan followed you. Prokopenko practically disappeared so he must have done the same?”

Kavinsky stares at him for a second, before taking a huge sip of ale and a deep drag of his cigarette.

“Jiang had to stick around, his Chinese billionaire parents kept him on the shortest fucking leash. He would still come up to Hell’s Kitchen, yeah, sixteen year old me decided to roost in Hell’s fucking Kitchen, and we would all hang out. Skov and Swan lived next to me until middle of college when they just up and went.”

Kavinsky polishes the rest of his ale off, still with a hefty amount left in the bottle, and Adam follows the movement of his too-prominent Adam’s apple. Kavinsky wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks him dead in the eye.

“Now Proko, Adam. Proko was a forgery.”

Adam feels the slightest drop of his jaw, a movement out of his control.

“A forgery?”

“A dream object based on someone I used to know.”

“Okay. And what happened to him?”

“I decided to let him go.”

“You killed him?”

“In a sense. I didn’t shoot him though. Couldn’t. Had to do my research and find the convergence of the strongest telluric currents in New York, by the way, it was near the Empire State Building for some reason, do some more magical mumbo jumbo, and returned him to the energy _from whence he came_.”

“Hm. _From whence he came_ , huh?”

Kavinsky senses that Adam wasn’t about to freak out on him and immediately relaxes. His posture stays the same and his face doesn’t change, but Adam can just tell.

“Yup. It was fucking hard too. I had to do _the weirdest shit_ , in the middle of bloody Midtown, on a New Moon, right before midnight, etcetera etcetera.”

“Why?”

“Here’s the thing. The real Prokopenko is still alive, out there, somewhere. I just decided to stop giving so much energy to people who couldn’t care less about me in return.”

There’s a moment silence and Adam takes a sip of his non-alcoholic lemon lime bitters just for something to do.

“Wow, Kavinsky. You’re really creepy.”

Kavinsky stares at him in shocked amusement for a bit before breaking into outright laughter. Adam can’t help but smile into the rim of his glass.

“So, are you less worried now?”

“As much as I appreciate you opening up, I don’t understand how that could make me less worried.”

“Lynch outright said to me that it was, and I quote, motherfucker was so lame, ‘it was never gonna be me and him’,”

“That was eight years ago, I’m not sure you understand how keen he was to see you again.”

“Yeah but I’m a petty fuck who’s never gonna let go of that. He made that bed and he’s gonna have to lay in it.”

“You’re not denying that he’s keen though.”

“Dude, you fucking hated my guts, _loathed me_ with every fiber of your being in high school. Look at us now. I can’t help it. I make people keen.”

Kavinsky finishes with a million-dollar advertising grin.

“In my defense, you sucked in high school.”

“In _my_ defense, everyone sucked in high school, even you. We all cope with our issues differently.”

Even with all this openness, Adam can’t help thinking it. That Kavinsky had been playing the long game all along. That all this was just a way to get back to Ronan Lynch, and that he would be left alone, in the end. Kavinsky reads his sudden sombreness.

“He was right though. It was never going to work, if it was just us two. We’re too similar. We’d tear each other apart.”

“So what, you need me as some kind of balancing mechanism so the two of you can _work_? Fuck that, Kavinsky.”

“It sounds bad, but yes, that’s exactly it. However, that works both ways. You think I could do the same for you and him. And he thinks I could do the same for him and you. Honestly, I’m the one who should be scared of getting shut out here.”

“We tried, Kavinsky. It didn’t work. The first time I spoke to him in 4 years, and it was about you.”

“Yeah but that’s because you had distance. In that time something in him changed and now he’s here, half an hour away. You could make it work, properly, this time. Face it, I’m the novelty here. You two always had the chance of being the real deal.”

Adam looks at Kavinsky and sees him. Like hard cut marble. Smoothed to perfection by all the abrasions of the world he had weathered. And deep inside him, the affection that he had been trying to tamper down, which he had been struggling with more and more recently, wells up.

“Do you think you could talk him into this? Us?”

“Us?” Kavinsky smiles, surprised but pleased.

“Yeah. About time we admitted _something_ , don’t you think.” Adam smirks, as Kavinsky bites his lips.

“I dunno. You’re the ex. You’d have a better go at it, right?”

“No thats exactly why I wouldn’t. I’m the _ex_. We ended on pretty terrible terms. In fact, I cheated on him with a girl, and I was still the one who dumped him. You should definitely do it. I think he misses you more than he misses me.”

“Fine. I suppose if I could talk _you_ of all people into bed, Lynch shouldn’t be too far fetched.”

They go back to Adam’s place.

 

-

 

Adam comes home from work and takes a shower. He comes out to a new message on his phone.

 

 

 

> Kavinsky: Hey, when you’re done do you wanna come over to my place? My number is 307.

 

Adam pulls on a light blue t-shirt and feels oddly nervous while he walks over. It’s ridiculous, because when Kavinsky isn’t actually at his place in the mornings, he always goes over to his kitchen window and waves anyway. But actually going to his place is taking whatever this is to a whole new level of reality that Adam isn’t sure how to deal with. He has a lurching sensation in his stomach and he can’t tell if it’s apprehension or excitement.

Kavinsky’s building is older but nicer looking than Adam’s. The lift however, looks like a death trap so Adam takes the art nouveau stairs up to the third floor. Walking to door 307, Adam can’t help but notice that the gaps between the doors are actually quite big. Adam raps his knuckles on the door a couple of times before it swings open. Kavinsky is wearing a long emerald green satin dressing robe, undone with matching lounge pants. He can see the assortment of small tattoos dotting Kavinsky’s torso, his favourite being the crude depiction of a grumpy sun smoking right below his collarbone.

“Of course you own a dressing gown.”

Kavinsky laughs and turns around, Adam follows him into the apartment.

“The back makes it.”

On the back of the dressing gown is a tastefully embroidered picture of a dragon, a tiger and a snake fighting. Adam suddenly makes an estimate that it must have cost more than half his suits combined. He also can’t help but wonder if this is more of Kavinsky’s skillful subliminal messaging happening.

“Am I the snake?” He asks as he sits down on the most comfortable couch he’s ever sat on. Chesterfield.

Kavinsky turns around from the fridge, one door but wide in size. It looks like a Smeg but doesn’t have the branding on the front, and it's just plain brushed metal instead of the famous bright colours the brand is known for. He has a plastic share size bottle of lemon lime bitters in one hand and a glass bottle of Belvedere in the other.

“You’re the tiger. I don’t have enough hands to get glasses and I’m not bothered to make a second trip so you’ll just have to neck it, yeah?”

Kavinsky sits in front of him, on the floor, instead of on the couch. On the floor, is a large rug with a design that Adam has never seen before. It looks like the kind of thing that would translate so well into a painting that, as a painting, it could be sold for millions at a Christie’s auction and end up hanging in the MoMA.

Adam takes a gulp of lemon lime bitters and looks around, as Kavinsky downs a shot of vodka straight from the bottle and chases it. The floor is the original parquet flooring of the building, with a couple more rugs, just as nice to look at, scattered around. The wall is exposed brick, but Adam suspects that Kavinsky had to ask permission to remove the original plaster that would be the standard in the other apartments in the building. Otherwise there’s the typical staple appliances, all in the same finish as the fridge, a couple of stools pulled up in front of the kitchen island, a TV and a gaming console just on the floor, with a thin layer of dust on it. Not much.

What really captures Adam’s attention though, is right next to the familiar fire escape, is a corner covered in canvases of paintings. All in stacks, either leaning against the wall in eights or lying on the floor piled up in tens. There must be at least fifty paintings. Adam nudges towards the corner with his forehead, but Kavinsky doesn’t bother turning around.

“You paint?”

“They’re dreamt up.”

“Still paintings though, right?”

“Yeah. I studied Fine Arts at Columbia.” Kavinsky says with a self-deprecating look, as if to dare Adam to go ahead, tell him what a fucking cliche that was. Arts major turned drug dealer.

Adam doesn’t do as such because it makes sense. What else is a dreamer to do, but keep dreaming. The sciences wouldn’t have helped. Kavinsky doesn’t deal with those rules of the universe.

“I’m surprised you actually went to college, to be honest.”

“What else was I supposed to do. Live in my head, in a coma, for the rest of my life? This might come as a surprise to you, but every now and then I do actually get bored of myself and need some external stimulation for a change.” Kavinsky catches the quick expression that flits across Adam’s face.

“I know, I had a hard time dealing with that realisation when I was young as well. _What do you mean I’m not the only person on this planet?_ ”

“Can I have a look?”

“Sure, do you want to do that before or after I tell you about how it went with Lynch.”

Adam fixes him with a bitchy look because that’s not playing very fair. All Kavinsky does in retaliation is play with the vodka in his mouth before swallowing it and giving Adam a big, shit-eating grin.

Adam stands up and walks over.

“How about whilst.”

Kavinsky groans and flops across his nice carpet.

Adam flips through Kavinsky’s paintings like he would a rolodex. Just at first impression, he can already tell that they’re in actuality, very, very good. And also very, very dreamt up. The blacks are blacker than any paint he’s ever come across, the red’s and blue’s too vibrant to just be pigment and oil. They’re more abstract than figurative. If Adam had to make reference to his limited art vocabulary, a little reminiscent of Rothko with rounder shapes or a less figurative Bacon. The realisation comes to him pleasantly.

“You exhibit.”

Kavinsky is looking at the ceiling and Adam can’t make out his expression.

“Yeah.”

“Successfully.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have anything on now?”

“I have a couple of things mounted at RARE Gallery right now, but they’ve already sold so you’re shit out of luck.”

Adam’s laughter bubbles out of him, and he stops flicking through the canvases to look at this bright yellow one that’s caught his eye.

“Is your _artiste_ name Joseph Kavinsky as well?”

This time Kavinsky turns around to look at him with a sour, are-you-kidding-me kind of face.

“No way. My father’s old associates would corrupt my whole thing if they knew I was doing this kind of stuff.”

Adam’s bright mood dims a little at that.

“So what is it, your name.”

“John Jaar”

“You must be joking.”

“Dead serious.”

“That is _awful_.”

“Hey man, John Jaar fucking makes bank, don’t knock him.”

“So, how did it go with Ronan. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

“It went well. We fought it out. Got kicked out of the bar. Bagged each other out at some park. And here I am.”

“‘Well’, right.”

“He’s still into you, and he might just be into me. He’s definitely into seeing us together, that much was obvious.”

Something indescribably hot shoots down Adam’s spine at the thought of that. Ronan liking the thought of him and Kavinsky.

“The thing is, I think you should meet up with him first. One on one. And properly this time, none of that walk out on you bullshit. Talk it out, get both of your shit together. Then we can go from there.”

Before Adam can say anything, Kavinsky continues.

“You two need to sort it out. The mutual attraction is there, it’s all about just get along now.”

“You’re surprisingly good at this.”

“I’ve had too many relationships gone sour for me not to, at this point.”

Later on, after they have sex in Kavinsky’s larger-than-king, definitely dreamed up because it’s that good of a bed, Adam asks if he can have the bright yellow painting.

He walks out with it the next morning and hangs it up in his bedroom. It’s the first thing that decorates his wall.


	2. Ronan

 

> Adam Parrish: Hey, let’s meet up.
> 
> Ronan Lynch: tomorrow 7pm richlane

-

What pisses Ronan of most, is that this didn’t happen on his terms. Everything kind of just unfolded behind him, out of reach, and when he turned around it was too late. Now he has to roll with the punches and hope that things go the way he wants them to.

Ronan grabs a table and finishes a drink before Adam walks in, clearly coming straight from work. Ronan despises the suit, and how good it looks on him. How good he looks.

“Hey, sorry I’m late, got held back at the office.”

“It’s fine, at this stage it doesn’t really make a difference, does it.”

Adam looks at him a bit, before sitting down.

“Okay, so we’re starting like that.”

“I’d like to bring up how you broke up with me. ‘I’m seeing someone else, let’s end this.’ If you expected that this was going to be anywhere near pleasant, well, I would expect you’re smarter than that.”

“Let’s be real, Ronan, it wasn’t going well. You were refusing to come up to see me, even though your schedule was so _empty_ you clearly could. And you knew, you know, how much I hate Henrietta. What was I supposed to do. Accept that I was so lonely even though I was actually in a relationship?”

“ _You’re_ the one who chose to go to a college which is a _thirty-six hour_ drive, straight across the fucking country.”

“Do I have to keep bringing up how much I hate Henrietta?”

“Even on the days I did come up, all you did was study. It was almost like I was only there for a post study session fuck.”

“I was in _law school_.”

They stare at each other heatedly. Ronan knows, both of them had their share of the blame when it came to ending the relationship.

“I’m not the one who cheated.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve already told you I’m sorry. I meant it, and I still do. But I’m sorry because I should have ended it with you before I started seeing her. I was in denial about us for too long.”

Ronan heaves a sigh.

“What do you want to drink.”

“I can get my own-”

“Yeah. You can definitely get the next round. What do you want.”

“A Diet Coke. Thanks.”

Ronan nods, gets up and heads to the bar. While waiting to order, he thinks how weird everything is. The thing is, they had talked all this shit out already, a few months after they broke up, at Gansey’s repetitive behest. But even though they were pretty much talking the same shit, it didn’t feel as resolved then as it does now.

When he returns, they both take a few sips before Adam speaks.

“What really brings you to New York. Please don’t tell me it just because of Kavinsky.”

“He’s part of it. The thing is Matthew came back from college with a girl, he proposed to her at the Farm and they got married there. I left right after they came back from their honeymoon. It just didn’t feel right to be there anymore.”

Ronan looks straight at Adam.

“Then I hear that Kavinsky’s around, not just anywhere, but near _you_. I didn’t really know if you would be in New York, but I had feeling. Where else would you go after fucking LA. My dad had a place in Williamsburg, where I’m living now. It just seemed like a good place to go.”

Ronan doesn’t mention how his attachment to the Farm had been slowly fading over the years, replaced with the itchy feeling of wanting to see what else was out there. Something that most people his age had felt, but bloomed late in himself.

“What are you doing here?”

Ronan drops his gaze to his drink, whisky on the rocks, with a cynical grin.

“You’re gonna laugh.”

“Why?”

“Because I got into NYU.”

Something in Adam’s demeanor hitches, but Ronan can’t place exactly what. When he says nothing, Ronan continues.

“Yeah. Apparently they like young entrepreneurs, so me owning and running the Farm helped my admissions. Also I’m rich.”

Ronan catches the slight disgust in Adam’s eyes, another contributing factor to the souring of their relationship. Ronan can’t help that he was born into privilege, that things come easy to him and that’s why he treats everything like it is easy. He knows how Adam’s had to fight tooth and claw to be where he is now. He knows it’s shit, that he can just rock up and already have everything going for him, a house he doesn’t have to pay for, a spot in a university that many lesser blessed people would kill to have. But these were the cards he was dealt and he hates that people look down on him for daring to use them.

“Right. What’s your major?”

“Latin.”

Yeah it’s pathetic, twenty-four and no idea what to do with himself besides dreaming and latin. He’s not even that good a dreamer, either. If anyone ever came to the Farm to cut open the cows, they would be bewildered at the strange anatomy in it. Kavinsky was the better dreamer.

Nevertheless, Ronan appreciates Adam’s pensive silence more than any ‘and what do you plan to do with that degree’ talk, so he changes topic.

“You and Kavinsky, how long.”

Adam takes a gulp of his Coke.

“Since New Years.”

“Seven months, huh.”

“We’re not dating. If that’s what you’re thinking. We hang out, have sex.”

“Parrish. That’s dating.”

Adam looks hard for a second before shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

“Well, we have never seen a movie together. Not even on netflix. We don’t go out to pricey restaurants to have dinner. He doesn’t know any of my friends and I don’t know any of his.”

“It just sounds like you’ve skipped the extraneous parts of dating and just got to the good stuff, to be honest.”

Ronan can’t help the tightening of his grip on his glass. Can’t help hating that he wants in, that it all feels remarkably like losing.

“What do you even see in that dickhead anyway.”

“Probably the same thing you saw, all those years ago. I’m just late.”

Instantly, he wants to scream, shout. What exactly? He doesn’t know. He feels like he’s drowning, choking on the unimaginable surplus of his own dissatisfaction. Of the three of them, how did he end up with the shortest straw. He stomps the sensation back down his throat and chases it with a big mouthful of whisky.

“He doesn’t exactly wear tank tops and cargo pants with ten thousand pockets anymore, though, so we definitely saw two different things.”

Ronan is proud at how blase his voice sounds.

“Oh, and what was he wearing when you saw him.” Adam teases.

“The green robe. Thing.”

“It’s nice isn’t it? I think I’m the snake but Kavinsky-”

Ronan cuts him off and cuts him with a sharp look.

"You’re the tiger.”

Ronan drains the rest of his glass, sucking on an ice cube that incidentally fell into his mouth.

“Don’t forget, Adam. Kavinsky’s _always_ the snake.”

-

Ronan goes home to his IKEA filled apartment, which matched with the refurbished wood-plank floors and exposed metal beams enough, he guesses. It reminds him a little of Monmouth, and he still hasn’t parsed out exactly how he feels about that.

He would have preferred to populate it with dream furniture, but his dreaming has been off game lately. He thinks it’s because he’s not running on Cabeswater anymore but an entirely different source of energy that isn’t friendly to him.

This time, he’s the thief. He wonders if that makes Kavinsky the Greywaren, or if there’s another Greywaren and they’re both thieves, or if it’s an entirely new set of rules that he has yet to learn how to break.

Despite everything, it was good to see Adam again. Finally, enough time has passed for him to be able to accept that Adam himself is and will always be a different person to the Adam he’d imagined. It’s easier to accept the incongruities between them now; it no longer feels like a personal slight.

Ronan doesn’t know if he should feel guilty to admit that it was even more satisfying to see Joseph Kavinsky again. He’s long connected Kavinsky’s disappearance with the night of the Camaro and it felt like the sweetest type of disclosure. Punctuated with barbed words and sharply knuckled fists. An outpouring of filthy, honest words, nothing held back, because both of them knew they had already done the worst to each other.

Sitting in a park in Williamsburg with Kavinsky next to him, wearing slim black pants and a thin black t-shirt, casually tucked in, hair slicked back with the sweaty effort of their rough-housing and the sounds of Brooklyn on a Friday night like a cacophony around them; he felt more like himself than he has in a long time.

He lies down on his ninety dollar bed, closes his eyes, and sees Kavinsky behind them. He’s dressed in the green satin thing he was wearing, when he opened the door after that night at Adam’s. Ronan sees himself, standing behind K, slipping the thing off still slim shoulders. Adam’s in front, kneeling, taking the matching pants off with the softest of tugs. Of course, Kavinsky is wearing nothing underneath. Somehow, all three of them make eye-contact and then Adam is dipping his mouth to Kavinsky’s cock. Kavinsky tilts his head back and Ronan follows the fading strip of marks on his neck, sucks them back to brand new. Kavinsky’s breath hitches as Adam put his fingers in him, Ronan joins. He’s panting in Ronan’s ear now, and Ronan and Adam withdraw their fingers only for Ronan to fuck into him.

Ronan comes in his hand, disgusted at himself. Clearly, he’s going to need to practice.

-

A few days later, he bumps into Kavinsky in Washington Square Park, both heading the same direction. They’d been exchanging short, derisive messages with not much meaning but hadn’t made any real plans to meet up again.

“Hey, just finished ruining someone’s life?” Ronan sneers.

“Honey, I’m in a perpetual state of life ruining.” Kavinsky smiles beatifically back, half ashed cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

He’s wearing a short sleeve, moss button-up, first two buttons undone and his usual pants. His shades, real obnoxious, gold-frame ones - similar to what an 80s Miami kingpin would have worn - are perched on top of his head pushing his hair back, even though it’s sunny enough for him to wear them properly. Ronan reckons Kavinsky’s figured out that he and Adam like his hair this way.

Kavinsky notices him staring and makes a show of checking him up and down before smiling like an old school Hollywood vixen.

“I’m on my way to meet up with Parrish at Berg’n. Want a ride?”

Something as viscous as molasses rolls from Ronan’s brain, down his spine and settles in his groin at hearing that. He smooths out his voice, but judging by the way Kavinsky is looking at him through his eyelashes, it doesn’t work very well.

“You drive in New York?”

“You _don’t_?” Kavinsky scoffs.

Ronan sours at being bested and Kavinsky laughs, makes a weird hand motion that is meant to imply he shake the last comment off.

“When you live in Brooklyn it’s almost just as inconvenient to take public transport to Manhattan and about ten times more uncomfortable. I won’t be racing anyone in gridlock, sorry babe, but we’ll be sitting in leather seats, functional air-conditioning and not be surrounded by thirty different types of BO.”

Really, how could Ronan argue with that.

Kavinsky’s parked at Icon, which even Ronan knows is pricey as hell because it’s a fucking valet service. When he slides into a black Evora 400, and sees Kavinsky handle the gear shift, he knows he’s lost his mind. Kavinsky drives with the most unbearable grin on his face, making as much barely legal turns as possible, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to Ronan.

As soon as they cross the bridge traffic lightens up.

“So which way to your house?”

“What?”

“You live in Williamsburg, right? We’re in Williamsburg.”

Ronan looks out the window, and yes, they are in Williamsburg. Suddenly he’s angry. He had assumed. Assumed that it was a standing invitation to whichever Crown Heights bar Adam and Kavinsky spent their time in. Ronan stares at the hairdresser across the road so hard he’s sure he could set it alight.

“Just fucking let me out here.”

“Lynch.”

He tries to shake the door open, hates how emotional he’s being, but a state-of-the-art car probably won’t let him out unless the driver allows it. Kavinsky takes a hand off the wheel and grips Ronan’s thigh. Ronan swivels his head so fast he gets whiplash.

“Get your fucking hand-”

“Look at me.”

The blur of anger smooths out enough so that he can make out the dim amusement on Kavinsky’s face.

“I’m joking.”

“ _Fuck. You_.”

Kavinsky smiles, as if to say, ‘you’ll get to that later.’ He returns his hand to the wheel but not before brushing it further up on Ronan’s thigh. Ronan twitches.

They turn into Lee Avenue which is blessedly empty of cars and without indication, Kavinsky stomps on the accelerator and they speed so quickly down Nostrand that Ronan feels like he’s entered a timewarp.

Kavinsky parks in his own garage, and stepping out of the car almost feels like coming down from a high.

The thought comes to him late, while they walk, shoulder touching shoulder, to Berg’n.

“Why didn’t we pick Adam up?”

“You probably know that Adam and I met when I was dealing to his co-workers. His boss even knows this car.”

“Right. What are you dealing?”

Kavinsky looks at him before answering,

“Kavinsky special menu. Everyone’s happy and no one get’s hurt.”

-

Ronan and Kavinsky are more than a few standards in, and flirting blatantly - they had gone to the bathroom together, Ronan stood so close in front of Kavinsky in the line that their noses touched - when Adam arrives. He’s still wearing his work clothes, sans suit jacket and tie. He has a glass bottle of coca-cola in his hand.

God, he looks good.

Adam spots them in the beer garden, and doesn’t seem surprised to see Ronan sitting next to Kavinsky, arm around his shoulders. Ronan can guess that Kavinsky had messaged him at some point.

“Hey,” He says, taking a seat. “You guys bumped into each other at NYU?”

“Yeah while Kavinsky was fucking up someone’s life.”

“I’d actually prefer to do that than study _latin_.”

“Shut up,” Ronan knows it’s weak but he really had no come back to that.

“How is it anyway,” Adam speaks up, “Latin?”

“It’s fine, I kept up with it because,” Ronan does some ambiguous hand twirling motion, “and I’ve always been good at it, so,”

“Yeah but, what exactly are you hoping to achieve with a degree in Latin? No judgement, alright? I’m genuinely, non-derisively curious.”

Leave it to Kavinsky to completely salt-cure his wounds.

“If it wasn’t obvious to you from the fact that I am studying _latin_ , I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. Happy?”

“No, actually, not happy. I was in fact hoping that you were doing it out of a sincere love of the language.”

Adam looks at them quietly with an inscrutable expression.

“It’s a waste. You get into NYU, and but you’re not actually in it. You’re not there. Do I, _me,_ actually have to say shit like this to you?”

Ronan squeezes Kavinsky’s shoulder to the point of hurting. He knows he’s leaving bruises.

Adam pipes up.

“What do you actually enjoy, Ronan?”

Ronan empties his drink before speaking.

“Driving, dreaming, drinking.”

Kavinsky snickers, “you like the D, huh?”

Ronan headbutts him, but it’s a pretty weird angle from the side.

However, Adam keeps staring at him as if he’s trying to decipher something.

“Why don’t you open a bar? I know you have the money for it, and you already ran the Farm for so long.”

“Open a bar in New York. Groundbreaking. Like there isn’t already a million bars in New York and surrounds. Like forty thousand other people my age and above don’t want to do the same thing.”

“Yeah,” Adam leans forward, “but you actually _could._ You have the financial freedom, hardly any risk involved, and who knows, you might actually enjoy it.”

Ronan smiles incredulously and looks to Kavinsky expecting to see a mirrored expression. Instead, Kavinsky’s staring at Adam with a fresh intensity, like he’s seeing someone new, and Ronan’s mind feels like it’s been dropped in liquid nitrogen. Then Kavinsky turns to look at him in the same way, and his brain starts to thaw.

“You should. I could help you. Dreamed up furniture is free, and also pretty much the best.”

“I could do that myself.”

Kavinsky snorts and takes a sip of whatever spirit he’s on tonight.

Ronan shakes his head, before refilling his pint from the jug and downing half of it like it would help clarify his thoughts.

“What, and drop out of NYU pretty much less than a month after classes began?”

Adam leans on his palm. “You could stay in NYU, become a Latin master slash bar owner.”

Kavinsky laughs.

“Ronan Lynch, a _slashie_. Wow.”

Adam turns to Kavinsky with sarcasm written all over his face, “You say that like you _aren’t_ one as well,”

There’s light amusement in the air, and they’re actually getting along. Not talking about all the ways they had mangled each other so long ago, or any of their destructive vices. Just talking about the future, like every other group of twenty-somethings who are meandering through life. Ronan smiles into his pint.

“Yeah, maybe. I guess that’s an option now.”

-

“A lawyer, a drug dealer and a latin student slash future bar owner walk into an apartment in Brooklyn.”

“Shut up, Kavinsky.”

It’s 1 am and Ronan has drank enough to be struggling with toeing off his shoes. Kavinsky’s pretty bad, but Ronan’s ashamed to say that he’s probably the sloppiest tonight. He doesn’t know how Adam managed to stay with them as they progressively got messier whilst staying sober, but he never seemed bored. Kavinsky had that effect on people, though.

Ronan wasn’t about to get public transport home at this time, and Kavinsky was forthcoming with an offer to just stay at his place. He leaned on Adam for the most part because Kavinsky  looked like he could be knocked over by a light wind.

Without thinking, he follows Adam and Kavinsky into what he presumes is the bedroom, only to realise what he’s done. Before he can begin panicking, Kavinsky pulls him onto honestly the biggest bed he’d ever laid eyes on, as in five people could sleep very comfortably in it at once, and suddenly he’s lying between Adam and Kavinsky. His high school self would have self combusted.

They talk more shit and Ronan falls asleep to the sound of Adam and Kavinsky arguing about Quentin Tarantino of all things.

When he wakes up, Adam is gone, and Kavinsky has thrown an arm over his chest and a leg over his leg. His mouth is so dry it hurts to run his tongue along the insides of his cheek. He slides away from Kavinsky, chugs a litre bottle of water empty, and eats a piece of dry toast on the fire escape. Adam’s kitchen window is empty and the clock on the microwave reads 10:00, so Ronan assumes he’s gone to work.

He’s looking through the stacks of paintings in the corner when he hears the shower running. He pulls one out that’s so black it looks like it’s dragging light in, flecked with carmine red and ultramarine so vibrant it’s like neon signage, flattened into a picture. Definitely dreamt up. He looks at the painting with an abstract, but certain, more certain than anything in his life has been for a long time, sense of understanding. He knows intrinsically what this painting is about, but never in his life will he able to describe it to anyone else.

“You can have it, if you want.”

Kavinsky’s towel drying his hair, wearing a pair of Adidas tracksuits and an oversized, soft looking navy t-shirt.

“Yeah, I want.”

Kavinsky smiles, wraps his hair in a towel turban while Ronan gleefully roasts him for it and heads to the fire escape for his morning dart. When Ronan sits next to him, painting leaning against the couch, Kavinsky offers him a fresh one straight out of the deck. Instead, Ronan plucks the one between Kavinsky’s lips, takes a deep drag of it, and returns it to his mouth. Kavinsky stares at him, and grins.

“So, I don’t have class today.”

Kavinsky nods whilst he blows smoke out.

“Do you want to go cruising?”

Kavinsky coughs in delight.

“I’m the one with the car, Lynch. Shouldn’t you be waiting for an offer from me?”

Ronan looks at him, like he’s disappointed Kavinsky doesn’t know him by now.

“Yeah alright, let’s do it. Take a shower though, you stink.”

“Drive me to my house? We can drop the painting off. I doubt you have any clothes that will fit me anyway.”

Kavinsky trails a heavy gaze along the breadth of his shoulders and the pull of his shirt across his chest. Ronan hasn’t met anyone that could play as well as Kavinsky could.

“Fine, let’s go.”

In a car, Ronan lives about 15 minutes away from Kavinsky. Kavinsky doesn’t even pretend that he’s not being nosy and touches pretty much everything there is to touch in Ronan’s apartment whilst he takes a shower.

When Ronan comes out changed, Kavinsky is sitting on his bed, looking at the painting leaning against the wall.

“I don’t have anything to hang it up with.”

“Don’t worry, it looks fine where it is.”

Ronan knows. His bed is very close to the floor, and he may have lied in it quickly to see if he could see the painting from that angle.

Ronan’s wearing deep black straight cut denim and a close fitting white t-shirt. He knows how he looks in clothes like these and he’s pleased to see Kavinsky appreciating it.

They slide into Kavinsky’s frankly ridiculous car and Ronan is surprised to be handed the aux cord.

“Where do you wanna go, hot stuff.”

He starts of with some light Gesaffelstein listening, and is validated by Kavinsky’s smirk of recognition.

“I dunno, anywhere we can speed.”

Kavinsky laughs.

They end up driving to Catskill mountains, going past the speed limit as much as possible. They go for a walk to the closest waterfall they could find, which was honestly pitiful and Kavinsky takes a selfie on his own because Ronan is ‘a fucking dick’; then they speed back into New York City as the sun goes down. All while listening to some BPM raising music with the best sound system that Ronan has ever had the pleasure of experiencing in a car.

“You, me and Adam should drive up to Toronto some time.”

“We should, if we ever get past the point of you know, even just making out.”

Kavinsky glances at him lightly.

“We will. Then you can speed this car down a highway while I blow you and Adam palms himself in the back.”

They’re stuck in the after work gridlock and Ronan leans over and kisses Kavinsky.

It’s better than all the times he’s imagined.

-

 

 

> Ronan Lynch: what time does parrish finish work
> 
> Kavinsky: Can’t you just message him directly
> 
> Ronan Lynch: if i could i wouldn’t be messaging you dick
> 
> Kavinsky: You’re lucky you’re hot. Hold on
> 
> Kavinsky: He should be done around 8
> 
> Ronan: u busy tonight
> 
> Kavinsky: Sorry honey, got errands to run.
> 
> Ronan: ‘errands’
> 
> Kavinsky: ;)

 

-

Ronan has been living in New York for the most part of the year but he hasn’t set foot on Times Square until now. And honestly, he’s not looking forward to doing it again. He’s not even on the street but the people in the lobby are giving him odd looks just because he’s wearing a hoodie. Like, chill out a bit. But when Adam exits the elevator with fifteen other people who are dressed exactly the same, spots him and lights up - it’s worth it.

“Hey! I wasn’t expecting to see you here, ever, actually,”

Adam laughs. Ronan hasn’t seen Adam this happy to see him in so long that he’s forgotten how euphoric it made him feel.

“Bye, Adam, see you next week.”

Adam waves to a beautiful woman wearing a slick black pantsuit and a bright red headscarf. She gives Adam a sly wink before turning around and strutting off.

“Uh, should I be worried,”

“What, oh, Nadia? No! No, no, no. She’s my team leader and a bit too invested in my love life, that’s all.”

“Invested?”

“She tried hooking me up with Kavinsky, and she knows exactly who Kavinsky is as well.”

“Everyone’s probably going to know about me by the end of next week then.”

“Don’t look too happy about it, she’s going to be pretty much unbearable from now on.”

They both rush out of Times Square because it’s truly one of the most annoying places Ronan has ever visited. They’re in the subway, which isn’t rush hour levels of horrendous but Ronan still dreams of being in Kavinsky’s car instead, when Adam brings it up.

“Actually, there’s a movie I want to see that’s showing in an hour at the BAM in Fort Greene. Do you want to watch it with me?”

“Which movie?”

“Moonlight, Barry Jenkins.”

Ronan groans because he doesn’t quite live under a rock.

“What are you even trying to tell me, right now?”

Adam’s face does a weird thing where his eyebrows are furrowed but his mouth is upturned.

“I’m not trying to tell you anything. It’s a movie that has some amazing write-ups, the trailer looks promising and wow, sorry if we might actually be able to relate to it. On a _personal_ level.”

“Fine. I guess.”

“You don’t _have_ to,”

“Nah, let’s go.”

“It’s okay, Lynch. You break the sound barrier in fast cars with Kavinsky and you watch arthouse cinema with me.”

Adam says it like he’s placating Ronan, which grinds at him a little.

“I want to do both with both of you.”

Adam’s face quiets momentarily.

“Well, I’m more than happy to sit in a car and break sound barriers all day listening to your, truthfully, terrifying music; but good luck getting Kavinsky to sit still in a dark room and be quiet for two hours.”

“We could netflix at his place. His TV is almost as big as a cinema.”

“Get ready to marathon all nine or whatever of the Fast and the Furious movies.”

“What’s wrong with the Fast and the Furious movies?”

Adam groans.

Begrudgingly, the movie ends up being good. Really good. Now secretly one of Ronan’s favourites good. He’s refraining from gushing about it like Adam is when they walk out and get a taxi to Ronan’s place, but Adam looks at him like he knows anyway.

When he opens the door the first thing Adam says is,

“Wow, it’s like being in Monmouth again.”

“I like to think that it’s cleaner.”

“You hardly have enough things to make an actual mess.”

“Do you want some Diet Coke?”

“I think I’ve drunk, like, a liter of soda so I’m good thanks. Can I use your shower though?”

“You gonna stay the night?”

Adam gives him a look over his shoulder.

“Have you got a problem with that?”

Ronan bites his lip and looks a little too pleased, but it’s okay, the only thing that can see his face right now is a six pack of Heineken.

“No man, can you not be so fucking defensive?”

“Stop asking me stupid questions then, where are your towels.”

“Wardrobe,”

They take turns showering and it takes all of Ronan’s discipline not to jack off to the image of Adam, freshly showered, in his clothes, damp hair darkened by water and curling. He makes himself commit to not making the first move.

It turns out this isn’t an issue because when he steps out of the bathroom, Adam turns his attention from Kavinsky’s painting to him, gets up and kisses him.

As Ronan pushes Adam down onto his bed, climbs on top of him and makes out, all he can think was, god, how he had missed this. Their dark days were _dark_ , fucking _abysmal_ , but their good days were some of the best memories that Ronan’s ever made. And although Ronan has had a few flings since he and Adam had ended it, none of them ever made him feel like this.

 

-

 

Ronan wakes up with such a profound feeling of satisfaction that he almost doesn’t recognise himself. They hadn’t even done much, just made out, heavily, okay. And maybe they jerked each other off. Basics. But still it felt very good, and waking up to Adam next to him felt even better. He sits up and sees Kavinsky’s painting leaning on the wall.

 

> Ronan Lynch: dick where are you

Ronan’s avoiding oil splatter from the bacon he’s cooking when his phone lights up.

 

> Kavinsky: You know, your message woke me up. You could be a little nicer…

He rolls his eyes and hears the flush in the bathroom. Ronan transfers the bacon onto a plate lined with a paper towel and breaks two eggs, one handed into the pan. Surely enough, another message comes through.

 

> Kavinsky: Alright, ice princess. I’m in Atlanta for the weekend. Won’t be back until Tuesday.

This time Ronan wipes his hands on a tea towel and replies.

 

> Ronan Lynch: ‘errands’?
> 
> Kavinsky: No, I’m visiting my 87 year old sugar daddy and giving him some lovin’

Ronan snorts.

 

> Ronan Lynch: too bad, me and adam were hoping for a driver for the weekend
> 
> Kavinsky: Then honey, just dream yourself up a car.
> 
> Ronan Lynch: man fuck you
> 
> Kavinsky: XOXO See you boys next week.

Adam pulls out a carton of orange juice from the fridge and actually pours it into a glass.

“Is that Kavinsky?”

“Yeah, he’s ditching us for his 87 year old sugar daddy in Atlanta.”

“What a shame.”

“Right?”

They eat bacon and eggs and hang-out for the rest of the day. Ronan goes over to Crown Heights with some work out clothes and they actually work out together. Adam punishes him for not being able to do as much sit ups as he can in two minutes but Ronan does the same when the opposite happens for pull ups. Adam hasn’t done the groceries in a week so they go to King Tai for dinner and drinks, which was slightly annoying because it was a Saturday. Being able to make fun of Adam for ordering a mocktail made up for it though. They go back to Adam’s place, almost but not quite have sex and Ronan falls asleep in actual slight fear of how happy he is.

“Why,” Adam mumbles, “Are you getting up at eight on a Sunday morning.”

“I have to go to church.”

“Oh, mm, do you want me to come with you?”

“Have you converted to Catholicism in the past four years?”

“No,”

“Then why would you come?”

“I dunno, keep you company,”

“When I go to church, my company is the Lord.”

“Alright, bye.”

Adam turns around, wraps himself in more of the sheets now that Ronan is out of bed and slips easily back into sleep.

Ronan has to google catholic churches in the area and St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church comes up. His heart swells a bit and so what if St. Augustine’s is ten minutes closer.

When he comes back, Adam is just finished fully waking up and gets annoyed at how he has nothing to make breakfast with. They go grocery shopping together.

“This would be easier if Kavinsky was here with a car.”

“Do you miss him?”

Adam looks at him as if his question was a bit left of field, which, to be fair, it was. 

“It’s weird because most weekends we do hang out, but honestly, I don’t think I see him as often as you might imagine.”

Ronan continues picking out avocadoes.

“But yes. The short answer would be I do. Why, don’t you?”

Ronan has been missing Kavinsky, yes, very low-key missing him, but missing him nonetheless, for more than seven years now. He’s kind of used to not having Kavinsky in his life. Now that he thinks about it though, he can imagine how Kavinsky can fill the gaps of silence or idleness that he and Adam have gotten used to as part of their relationship. That’s just the way Kavinsky was. He doesn’t know if he should feel guilty about it though, do good relationships even have those gaps? What exactly are he and Adam right now? It was already a bit messed up, without Kavinsky in the equation.

“Yeah. Yeah I do. Is that bad?”

“Nah. It means this might all just work out.”

Adam scoffs at him when he calls for an Uber and Ronan sneers back.

“Don’t even pretend that you would prefer to walk.”

Adam chews the inside of his mouth and says nothing. He can’t hide the upturn of lips though. 

They unpack the groceries, have brunch and then idle around doing inconsequential things before Ronan can’t take it anymore and flops across the kitchen table. 

“I’m _bored_.”

“Then dream up a car and we can go cruising.”

“That is exactly what Kavinsky said.” 

“So what’s stopping you.”

Ronan sits up straight and Adam can sense the change in gravity because he bookmark’s his page and puts his book down. 

“I haven’t been able to dream since I’ve come to New York.”

Adam stares at him for a bit. 

“What, at all?” 

Ronan leans back into the chair and stares at the ceiling.

“I’m having normal dreams. The kind where it’s all a swirl of colour and sensation but I can’t really make anything out when I wake up and I forget everything by the time I finish eating breakfast. I haven’t been able to actually _dream_ anything.” 

“Have you told Kavinsky?” 

“No, but I’m sure he knows.”

“He’s not going to help you unless you ask.”

Ronan’s face can't help but pinch.

Adam sighs and opens his laptop.

“I mean, you have a gross amount of disposable income right?”

Ronan grunts.

“We can always just rent.”

And that’s how they end up speeding down the Garden State Parkway in a rented Aston Martin, classic green colour, of course, 3 on a sunday afternoon. They make it to Atlantic City right before sundown and Ronan even acquiesces to taking a selfie with Adam at sunset, sitting on the bonnet of their sick, rented car, in front of Caesars. He sends it to Kavinsky. 

 

> Ronan Lynch: oi where are you
> 
> Kavinsky: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I’M IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA. NOT ATLANTIC CITY. Welcome to my hometown, but.

Kavinsky sends back a selfie with him and Young Thug sitting on his Lotus in front of a building with neon signage that spelled ‘Magic City’. It was obviously taken at night and both Kavinsky and his new friend are both clearly on it.

“Motherfucker.”

Adam leans over to look at his phone.

“Hm?”

 

> Ronan Lynch: MOTHERFUCKER SICK INVITE
> 
> Kavinsky: I don’t mix business and pleasure, baby.
> 
> Ronan Lynch: bullshit also dont ever call me that again bye

Adam’s looking at him, perplexed.

“Who’s that?”

“Young Thug.”

“ _Who_?”

They speed back up to New York, glittering lights turning into lasers zooming past, with Ronan blasting Digits and Adam loudly complaining that he can’t even make out the enunciation. By the time Ronan drops Adam off, he’s gotten him into Travis Scott.

-

 

Ronan gets summoned to Kavinsky’s place late Tuesday night. Adam’s stuck at the firm doing some very intense overnight lawyering, so it’s just him, Kavinsky and a bottle of Belvedere.

They’re lying across a stupid nice carpet in Kavinsky’s stupid nice garage with his just plain stupid car parked on the street.

“Alright, let’s get dreaming.”

“What.”

“Parrish told me you were having some performance issues.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

“No, but seriously. It shouldn’t be any different to what I told you way back.”

“But there’s,” Ronan pauses, “nothing.”

“Yeah, and?”

“In Henrietta there was, you know, Cabeswater.”

“Actually, that’s the outlier of this whole operation.” Kavinsky grabs the bottle by the neck and helps himself to another mouthful. “I’ve been dreaming since I was but a wee lad. Jersey, California, all over the Northern Hemisphere, actually. Henrietta was the first place that I had to navigate… _geography_.”

“Geography?”

“Yeah. Like, trees and terrain, and sunlight that is actually, you know, discernible in a dream?” 

Ronan stares at Kavinsky.

“Pretty much everywhere else I’ve dreamt, it’s either complete blackness and you just gotta pull or mold something out of that blackness, or it’s lights.”

Kavinsky waves and folds his fingers above his head.

“Sensations, nothing tangible. _Dream like_. You feel?”

“So what was Cabeswater.”

“Who knows?”

But Kavinsky looks like he has a clue, even if he doesn't have the whole picture. Ronan doesn't say anything. He just turns his head to the ceiling, a criss cross of red metal pipes.

“But you’re a big boy now, Lynch. And you need big boy toys.”

“Fucks sake, can you not talk like that?”

Kavinsky cackles.

“I’m guessing you have a car in mind. Should I ask what happened to the old one? Wasn’t it sentimental?”

“Dark grey E30.”

“Gross.”

Ronan just gives him the bird. Kavinsky grabs it, brings it up to his lips and kisses it.

“You’re so,”

“Same deal, honey. Don’t let the flashing lights fool you. No dream is ever just a dream for a dreamer.”

“Do I still have to ‘sneak’ around.”

Kavinsky casts him a rare, heavy gaze and Ronan’s world tunnels to Kavinsky looking at him.

“Just because you can’t see or make sense of the monsters doesn’t mean they’re not there. We’re dealing with powers not completely of this world. In and out.” 

“No pills?”

Kavinsky smiles, “Let’s see if you can do without.”

Ronan closes his eyes.

In the darkness, the first conscious part of him reminds him that there’s something he has to do. That part, like a magnet, attracts the rest of him, until he gains a loose sense of self. Then everything is colour, too otherworldly to be recognisable. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. It feels like an instant and forever. Something grasps what feels like his hand and it’s slimy. He feels scales and claws and it starts to hurt. He needs to go.

Ronan opens his eyes. His cheek stings and Kavinsky is hovering over him with a palm suspended in the air.

“You were bringing something back. Not an E30.”

Kavinsky lifts away from him and his eyes catch on Ronan’s upturned wrist, which is bleeding.

“Hold on I’ll be back.”

Ronan probably has three standards worth of vodka before Kavinsky opens his eyes. He unfurls his fist to reveal a box of Hello Kitty band-aids and a jar of pills.

As Ronan is applying band-aids to the fucking _claw marks_ on his wrist, he can’t help but ask,

“Why didn’t we just go with the pills from the get go." 

“Did you need pills to dream up your farm?” 

Ronan stares, “No.”

“I haven’t had to use these for a very long time, but they helped when I was younger.”

“What do they do?”

“They’ll help you remember your structure. It’s hard to take things when you can’t even tell what hands are let alone if you have them.”

Ronan pops one, chases it with vodka, closes his eyes.

It’s on his fourth pill and god knows what time before he can finally see it in the dizzying array of colour. But when he goes to lift the bonnet, it’s empty. He slides inside, and there’s no dashboard or wheel. Ronan concentrates very hard, remembers that there’s a world outside of this one. In that world he spent time looking through the parts. He knows them. _He knows them_.

He didn’t even know he had closed his eyes, but when they open, there’s the dashboard and wheel he was forced to memorise, down to the grain of the too-black leather. He exits the car and opens the bonnet again. There’s a full engine staring up at him.

Ronan opens his eyes and turns his head. Kavinsky.

He turns his head the other way, and grins.

-

 

Ronan feels sorry for Adam, when he gets a message saying that he won’t be done until 9:30pm. But it’s slightly easier to get a car into Times Square than it would be at 6, so he supposes it’s all divine timing. In any case, the look on Adam’s face when he recognises just who is beeping at him is extremely satisfying.

“I hope you didn’t pay too much money for a car like _this_ ,” Adam smirks as he slides into the passenger seat.

“Don’t worry, it was free.”

Ronan pulls the E30 into the middle lane and tries to get out of Times Square as fast as possible.

“Nice dice.” Adam taps the superbly red furry dice hanging on his rear-view mirror. They had eyes instead of dots.

“Thanks, I dreamt them myself.” 

Adam startles at Kavinsky’s voice as he folds up from the backseat and hangs his arms on the back rest of Adam’s seat.

“Wow, look at you all grown up and deigning to sit in the back.”

“You’d be surprised at what I’m willing to sacrifice for a good dramatic reveal.”

Kavinsky works at un-doing Adam’s already loosened tie and pulling it off, even going so far as to opening the first few buttons of his shirt, from the backseat. Ronan hates that he has to keep his eyes on the road.

“So, where to?”

“To be honest, I really just want to go home and get some rest.”

“Do you wanna not-smoke in my huge bed?”

Adam looks at Kavinsky through the rear-view.

“Actually, that would be good.”

“What the hell is not-smoke?”

Ronan takes them onto Manhattan bridge even though it’s the slower route because his car fucking deserves it. It’s a Wednesday night so he’s free to push the accelerator a bit further.

“Kavinsky special menu. Non-headache, five times better than weed, weed.”

“I’m more interested in Kavinsky special menu, ‘everyone’s happy and no one gets hurt’.” 

Kavinsky turns a heated gaze on him, elbow dangling out the window, dark hair whipping in the wind. He’s wearing a bordeaux Japanese souvenir jacket which matches the speeding lights on Manhattan bridge. Adam’s staring just as openly, hair slightly greasy and staying mostly still, pushed back off his forehead. The top buttons of his business shirt is undone, courtesy of Kavinsky and Ronan can see the shadows of his collarbones beneath. Ronan wants this night, this drive on this bridge with lights shooting past to last for much longer than it will.

“That’s not a Wednesday night narcotic, baby boy.” 

“Can you, not call me that.”

“But I love the way your forearms flex when I do. Especially when you’re holding a steering wheel.”

“That’s my muscles resisting the urge to deck you.”

“Sorry, I make the drugs, I make the rules. Only not-cigarettes tonight.”

“When did you get so _boring_.”

“Hey man, you haven’t even tried my not-cigarettes. They may not be faux coke, but let Adam tell you, they’re hardly boring.” 

“Yeah, I’ll vouch.”

Ronan parks his car in Adam’s formerly unused parking spot and he and Kavinsky do their usual of bagging each other out on his still warm bonnet while they wait for Adam to come down with clothes and shit from his apartment. They walk over to Kavinsky’s together.

While Adam showers, Kavinsky mixes some drinks with a truly fucked up vodka ratio. Ronan stands behind him, closer than necessary, arms dangling heavily from Kavinsky’s shoulders, chin resting on the top of Kavinsky’s head.

“I get it, you’re much taller than me.” 

“You don’t like this?” Ronan speaks softly into his ear.

Kavinsky looks sleepily at him.

“I like this.” 

They take the drinks, one plain lemon lime bitters and two vodka with, like, a tablespoon of lemon lime bitters and rest them on the bed.

Ronan is failing to tip a glass onto the sheets and Kavinsky, in his stupid Adidas tracksuit is laughing at him when Adam exits the shower wearing his striped pyjama pants.

“I’m telling you, they will never spill.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Kavinsky special menu. I don’t want to my drinks to spill.”

Adam climbs onto the bed and peers at his glass of lemon lime bitters curiously.

“Not even if I turn it upside-down completely?”

Kavinsky flashes Adam a dangerous, close lipped smile, eyes practically sparkling. So Adam turns his almost full glass bottoms up.

Ronan stares at the suspension of liquid, the surface wiggling as if it knows it should abide by the laws of physics and come pouring out and is bewildered by what’s hindering it.

“How do you even _do_ that?” The question is tinged desperate, Ronan can’t help it from escaping his lips.

Kavinsky sips his drink calmly. 

“You just have to convince it to follow what you want instead of the rules of the universe.”

“Convince it, how?”

Kavinsky looks dead at him and leans closer.

“By wanting it, really, really badly.”

Adam watches their exchange silently before dipping his head under his upturned glass and sticking his tongue into the confused liquid.

Ronan watches, sees the bob of Kavinsky’s adams apple peripherally.

“I reckon if I had a straw, I could drink it like this.”

“You could drink it like that sipping it from the rim. Drinking it isn’t spilling it.”

Adam turns his head to look at Kavinsky and his glass the right way up again. 

“Aren’t you useful.”

Kavinsky laughs.

“Alright, enough magic tricks.”

Kavinsky pulls out a blank whiter-than-white deck, offers them each a not-cigarette before chucking it carelessly onto the middle of the bed. He pulls out a red metal zippo lighter, ostentatiously engraved and lights Ronan’s, Adam’s and his own last. 

They each lay down, stare at the ceiling and take a drag. 

Ronan almost wants to kill himself when he starts hacking his lungs out. Through the sounds of his own unrestrainable coughing and the shameful stinging sensation in his eyes, he can make out Adam’s singular, surprised bark of laughter. In the periphery, Kavinsky whispers, astonished,

“No way,” 

Ronan reaches for his unspillable glass of vodka and drinks pretty much all of it. Anything to swallow the coughs down. It doesn’t help with the stinging though.

“Not even once?”

He gives Kavinsky the dirtiest glare he can muster through his tears.

When the thumbs finish wiping the tears from his eyes, he looks up and sees Adam, not-fucking-cigarette pursed between his lips.

“Here,” Adam sucks on it, takes it out of his mouth, “Like this.” 

Adam hovers over his mouth and Ronan knows to inhale the smoke he blows out. He’s seen the movies.

He does it a couple more times, and Ronan doesn’t know why he hasn’t closed the gap between them yet.

It hits him gently, but very, very noticeably.

“Oh, okay.”

Adam’s knees are still bracing his hips when he asks, with a smile, 

“Feeling it?” 

Ronan can’t answer, can only feel his eyelids dragging down and his lips smiling back.

“Good.”

Adam makes out with him.

It lasts for a while too, so he’s surprised that his own not-cigarette hasn’t burnt to ashes. Adam shifts to sit pressed right up next to him, so he’s free to cast a dazed look at Kavinsky, who is lying on his side, lazily watching them.

“They only burn when you take a drag.” 

Kavinsky is smart. He’s so, so, so smart. No wonder he didn’t bother turning up to class. 

It’s only when Ronan can distinctly feel his eyes rolling backward that he can gather the words,

“Do people’s eyes,” he drawls, “usually roll on weed?”

He feels Adam peer curiously at him.

“Not usually, but this is Kavinsky special menu, remember?” Kavinsky tilts his head in the manner of someone who knows exactly what they look like at that angle, “Are you bored yet?”

“Not bored, but why are you so far.”

“Oh I’m sorry, is someone feeling a little needy?”

“Yeah,” Ronan doesn’t pout, but it’s an almost thing. “You guys had a seven month head start, without me.”

“Do it to me,” Adam pipes in.

“What?”

“Shotgunning.”

Ronan successfully takes a drag from his own stick and exhales it into Adam’s waiting mouth. Adam inhales it before kissing him again. While he’s distracted, Ronan feels what could only be Kavinsky settling across both of their laps.

It takes him a while to focus on anything that isn’t Adam’s lips and tongue on him but when it all clears up he sees Kavinsky, not-cigarette pretty much to the filter, looking brightly up at him.

“Hello,” 

Ronan says nothing, stares down at him half-lidded for a bit before bending and meeting Kavinsky’s lips. His right hand, not-cigarette still perched between his index and middle fingers, swathes down the expanse of Kavinsky’s pale torso. Over his chest, down his ribs and the slight V of his hips, over the slope of his fucking Adidas pants.

When he sits back up, Adam wraps one arm loosely around his shoulders and leans his weight on his other arm behind. His not-cigarette looks to only have one drag left in it and Ronan finishes it off. Simultaneously, Kavinsky plucks the one that's in the hand casually resting on top of Kavinsky’s dick, and smokes it indolently.

“Okay, now I feel needy. No weed, no action and no sleep in 40 hours.”

Without pause, Kavinsky turns his head and blows a plume of smoke directly onto Adam’s clothed cock. He hisses in pleasure, but before he can get a word in, Kavinsky traces it with his mouth. Ronan spots the pink of his tongue.

Kavinsky withdraws to take another pull of not-weed. Adam’s white, cotton pyjamas are damp enough to show an impression of the tanned skin underneath.

Ronan whispers, “Fuck.”

-

The next night, he, Kavinsky and the E30 pick Adam up from the firm again. They get stuck in Times Square rush hour traffic for so long that Adam actually falls asleep through Kavinsky blasting his Future playlist. Ronan doesn’t exactly have to princess carry Adam up to Kavinsky’s apartment, but they do risk the death trap elevator. Adam is hardly out of his work clothes before he straight passes out on Kavinsky’s bed, and it’s not even 9.

Through a gourmet dinner of frozen wedges dipped in ketchup and mayo, Ronan mentions the movie he watched with Adam at Fort Greene. Kavinsky insists, violently, on watching it so they sit through a torrented, cam version of it.

When they crawl into bed, Ronan asks “Did you like it?”

“Yeah.”

He listens to Adam’s soft snoring and allows himself to fall closer to sleep. 

“I might even buy the blu-ray.” Kavinsky mumbles after a couple of minutes.  
  
Ronan snorts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did u really write a recreational drug use fic if there’s no gratuitous shotgunning? no , no u didnt. Anyway V AMBIVALENT ABOUT THIS but would rather post it than see it wither in my docs. macy gray - i try.mp3

**Author's Note:**

> WRITE THE FIC YOU WANT TO READ. Does it make sense? Kinda. Are the characters, you know, IN character? BARELY! But it's okay so long as we're having fun.


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